MALTHUS’ ESSAY ON THE PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION

[Pages:34]MALTHUS' ESSAY ON THE PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION

John Avery H.C. ?rsted Institute University of Copenhagen, Denmark

May 31, 2005

Summary

The famous book on population by T. Robert Malthus grew out of his conversations with his father, Daniel, who was an enthusiastic believer in the optimistic philosophy of the Enlightenment. Like Godwin and Condorcet, Daniel Malthus believed that the application of scientific progress to agriculture and industry would inevitably lead humanity forward to a golden age. His son, Robert, was more pessimistic. He pointed out that the benefits of scientific progress would probably be eaten up by a growing population.

At his father's urging, Robert Malthus developed his ideas into a book, the first edition of which was published anonymously in 1798. In this classic book, Malthus pointed out that under optimum conditions, every biological population, including that of humans, is capable of increasing exponentially. For humans under optimum conditions, the population can double every twenty-five years, quadruple every fifty years and increase by a factor of 8 every seventy-five years. It can grow by a factor of 16 every century, and by a factor of 256 every two centuries, and so on.

Obviously, human populations cannot increase at this rate for very long, since if they did, the earth would be completely choked with people in a very few centuries. Therefore, Malthus pointed out, various forces must be operating to hold the population in check. Malthus listed first the "positive checks" to population growth - disease, famine, and war. In addition, he

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listed "preventive checks" - birth control (which he called "Vice"), late marriage, and "Moral Restraint". The positive checks raise the death rate, while the preventive checks lower fertility.

According to Malthus, a population need not outrun its food supply, provided that late marriage, birth control or moral restraint are practiced; but without these less painful checks, the population will quickly grow to the point where the grim Malthusian forces - famine, disease and war - will begin to act. Today, as the population of humans and the size of the global economy rapidly approach absolute limits set by the carrying capacity of the earth's environment, it is important to listen to the warning voice of Malthus.

Contents

1. The education of Malthus 2. Debate on the views of Godwin and Condorcet 3. Publication of the first essay in 1798 4. The second essay, published in 1803 5. Systems of equality 6. The Poor Laws 7. Replies to Malthus 8. Ricardo's Iron Law of Wages; the Corn Laws 9. Acceptance of birth control in England 10. The Irish Potato Famine of 1845 11. The impact of Malthus on biology 12. The importance of Malthus today 13. Limits to the carrying capacity of the global environment 14. Conclusion

1. The education of Malthus

T.R. Malthus' Essay on The Principle of Population, the first edition of which was published in 1798, was one of the the first systematic studies of the problem of population in relation to resources. Earlier discussions of the problem had been published by Boterro in Italy, Robert Wallace in England, and Benjamin Franklin in America. However Malthus' Essay was the first to stress the fact that, in general, powerful checks operate continuously to keep human populations from increasing beyond their available food supply. In a

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later edition, published in 1803, he buttressed this assertion with carefully collected demographic and sociological data from many societies at various periods of their histories.

The publication of Malthus' Essay coincided with a wave of disillusionment which followed the optimism of the Enlightenment. The utopian societies predicted by the philosophers of the Enlightenment were compared with reign of terror in Robespierre's France and with the miseries of industrial workers in England; and the discrepancy required an explanation. The optimism which preceded the French Revolution, and the disappointment which followed a few years later, closely paralleled the optimistic expectations of our own century, in the period after the Second World War, when it was thought that the transfer of technology to the less developed parts of the world would eliminate poverty, and the subsequent disappointment when poverty persisted. Science and technology developed rapidly in the second half of the twentieth century, but the benefits which they conferred were just as rapidly consumed by a global population which today is increasing at the rate of one billion people every fourteen years. Because of the close parallel between the optimism and disappointments of Malthus' time and those of our own, much light can be thrown on our present situation by rereading the debate between Malthus and his contemporaries.

Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834) came from an intellectual family: His father, Daniel Malthus, was a moderately well-to-do English country gentleman, an enthusiastic believer in the optimistic ideas of the Enlightenment, and a friend of the philosophers Henry Rousseau, David Hume and William Godwin. The famous book on population by the younger Malthus grew out of conversations with his father.

Daniel Malthus attended Oxford, but left without obtaining a degree. He later built a country home near Dorking, which he called "The Rookery". The house had Gothic battlements, and he land belonging to it contained a beech forest, an ice house, a corn mill, a large lake, and serpentine walks leading to "several romantic buildings with appropriate dedications".

Daniel Malthus was an ardent admirer of Rousseau; and when the French philosopher visited England with his mistress, Th?er`ese le Vasseur, Danial Malthus entertained him at the Rookery. Rousseau and Th?er`ese undoubtedly saw Daniel's baby son (who was always called Robert or Bob) and they must have noticed with pity that he had been born with a hare lip. This was later sutured, and apart from a slight scar which marked the operation, he became

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very handsome. Robert Malthus was at first tutored at home; but in 1782, when he was

16 years old, he was sent to study at the famous Dissenting Academy at Warrington in Lancashire. Joseph Priestly had taught at Warrington, and he had completed his famous History of Electricity there, as well as his Essay on Government, which contains the phrase "the greatest good for the greatest number".

Robert's tutor at Warrington Academy was Gilbert Wakefield (who was later imprisoned for his radical ideas). When Robert was 18, Wakefield arranged for him to be admitted to Jesus College, Cambridge University, as a student of mathematics. Robert Malthus graduated from Cambridge in 1788 with a first-class degree in mathematics. He was Ninth Wrangler, which meant that he was the ninth-best mathematician in his graduating class. He also won prizes in declamation, both in English and in Latin, which is surprising in view of the speech defect from which he suffered all his life.

2. Debate on the views of Godwin and Condorcet

In 1793, Robert Malthus was elected a fellow of Jesus College, and he also took orders in the Anglican Church. He was assigned as Curate to Okewood Chapel in Surrey. This small chapel stood in a woodland region, and Malthus' illiterate parishoners were so poor that the women and children went without shoes. They lived in low thatched huts made of woven branches plastered with mud. The floors of these huts were of dirt, and the only light came from tiny window openings. Malthus' parishioners diet consisted almost entirely of bread. The children of these cottagers developed late, and were stunted in growth. Nevertheless, in spite of the harsh conditions of his parishoners' lives, Malthus noticed that the number of births which he recorded in the parish register greatly exceeded the number of deaths. It was probably this fact which first turned his attention to the problem of population.

By this time, Daniel Malthus had sold the Rookery; and after a period of travel, he had settled with his family at Albury, about nine miles from Okewood Chapel. Robert Malthus lived with his parents at Albury, and it was here that the famous debates between father and son took place.

1793, the year when Robert Malthus took up his position at Okewood, was also the year in which Danial Malthus friend, William Godwin, published his

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enormously optimistic book, Political Justice [6,14,21]. In this book, Godwin predicted a future society where scientific progress would liberate humans from material want. Godwin predicted that in the future, with the institution of war abolished, with a more equal distribution of property, and with the help of scientific improvements in agriculture and industry, much less labour would be needed to support life. Luxuries are at present used to maintain artificial distinctions between the classes of society, Godwin wrote, but in the future values will change; humans will live more simply, and their efforts will be devoted to self-fulfillment and to intellectual and moral improvement, rather than to material possessions. With the help of automated agriculture, the citizens of a future society will need only a few hours a day to earn their bread.

Godwin went on to say, "The spirit of oppression, the spirit of servility and the spirit of fraud - these are the immediate growth of the established administration of property. They are alike hostile to intellectual improvement. The other vices of envy , malice, and revenge are their inseparable companions. In a state of society where men lived in the midst of plenty, and where all shared alike the bounties of nature, these sentiments would inevitably expire. The narrow principle of selfishness would vanish. No man being obliged to guard his little store, or provide with anxiety and pain for his restless wants, each would lose his own individual existence in the thought of the general good. No man would be the enemy of his neighbor, for they would have nothing to contend; and of consequence philanthropy would resume the empire which reason assigns her. Mind would be delivered from her perpetual anxiety about corporal support, and free to expatiate in the field of thought which is congenial to her. Each man would assist the inquiries of all."

Godwin insisted that there is an indissoluble link between politics, ethics and knowledge. Political Justice is an enthusiastic vision of what humans could be like at some future period when the trend towards moral and intellectual improvement has lifted men and women above their their present state of ignorance and vice. Much of the savage structure of the penal system would then be unnecessary, Godwin believed. (At the time when he was writing, there were more than a hundred capital offenses in England, and this number had soon increased to almost two hundred. The theft of any object of greater value than ten shillings was punishable by hanging.)

In its present state, Godwin wrote, society decrees that the majority of

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its citizens "should be kept in abject penury, rendered stupid with ignorance and disgustful with vice, perpetuated in nakedness and hunger, goaded to the commission of crimes, and made victims to the merciless laws which the rich have instituted to oppress them". But human behavior is produced by environment and education, Godwin pointed out. If the conditions of upbringing were improved, behavior would also improve. In fact, Godwin believed that men and women are subject to natural laws no less than the planets of Newton's solar system. "In the life of every human", Godwin wrote, "there is a chain of causes, generated in that eternity which preceded his birth, and going on in regular procession through the whole period of his existence, in consequence of which it was impossible for him to act in any instance otherwise than he has acted."

The chain of causality in human affairs implies that vice and crime should be regarded with the same attitude with which we regard disease. The causes of poverty, ignorance, vice and crime should be removed. Human failings should be cured rather than punished. With this in mind, Godwin wrote, "our disapprobation of vice will be of the same nature as our disapprobation of an infectious distemper."

In France the Marquis de Condorcet had written an equally optimistic book, Esquisse d'un Tableau Historique des Progr`es de l'Esprit Humain. Condorcet's optimism was unaffected even by the fact that at the time when he was writing he was in hiding, under sentence of death by Robesspierre's government. Besides enthusiastically extolling Godwin's ideas to his son, Daniel Malthus also told him of the views of Condorcet.

Condorcet's Esquisse, is an enthusiastic endorsement of the idea of infinite human perfectability which was current among the philosophers of the 18th century, and in this book, Condorcet anticipated many of the evolutionary ideas of Charles Darwin. He compared humans with animals, and found many common traits. Condorcet believed that animals are able to think, and even to think rationally, although their thoughts are extremely simple compared with those of humans. He also asserted that humans historically began their existence on the same level as animals and gradually developed to their present state. Since this evolution took place historically, he reasoned, it is probable, or even inevitable, that a similar evolution in the future will bring mankind to a level of physical, mental and moral development which will be as superior to our own present state as we are now superior to animals.

In his Esquisse, Condorcet called attention to the unusually long period

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of dependency which characterizes the growth and education of human offspring. This prolonged childhood is unique among living beings. It is needed for the high level of mental development of the human species; but it requires a stable family structure to protect the young during their long upbringing. Thus, according to Condorcet, biological evolution brought into existence a moral precept, the sanctity of the family.

Similarly, Condorcet maintained, larger associations of humans would have been impossible without some degree of altruism and sensitivity to the suffering of others incorporated into human behavior, either as instincts or as moral precepts or both; and thus the evolution of organized society entailed the development of sensibility and morality.

Condorcet believed that ignorance and error are responsible for vice; and he listeded what he regarded as the main mistakes of civilization: hereditary transmission of power, inequality between men and women, religious bigotry, disease, war, slavery, economic inequality, and the division of humanity into mutually exclusive linguistic groups.

Condorcet believed the hereditary transmission of power to be the source of much of the tyranny under which humans suffer; and he looked forward to an era when republican governments would be established throughout the world. Turning to the inequality between men and women, Condorcet wrote that he could see no moral, physical or intellectual basis for it. He called for complete social, legal, and educational equality between the sexes.

Condorcet predicted that the progress of medical science would free humans from the worst ravages of disease. Furthermore, he maintained that since perfectibility (i.e. evolution) operates throughout the biological world, there is no reason why mankind's physical structure might not gradually improve, with the result that human life in the remote future could be greatly prolonged. Condorcet believed that the intellectual and moral facilities of man are capable of continuous and steady improvement; and he thought that one of the most important results of this improvement will be the abolition of war.

As Daniel Malthus talked warmly about Godwin, Condorcet, and the idea of human progress, the mind of his son, Robert, turned to the unbalance between births and deaths which he had noticed among his parishoners at Okewood Chapel. He pointed out to his father that no matter what benefits science might be able to confer, they would soon be eaten up by population growth. Regardless of technical progress, the condition of the lowest social

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class would remain exactly the same: The poor would continue to live, as they always had, on the exact borderline between survival and famine, clinging desperately to the lower edge of existence. For them, change for the worse was impossible since it would loosen their precarious hold on life; their children would die and their numbers would diminish until they balanced the supply of food. But any change for the better was equally impossible, because if more nourishment should become available, more of the children of the poor would survive, and the share of food for each of them would again be reduced to the precise minimum required for life.

Observation of his parishioners at Okewood had convinced Robert Malthus that this sombre picture was a realistic description of the condition of the poor in England at the end of the 18th century. Techniques of agriculture and industry were indeed improving rapidly; but among the very poor, population was increasing equally fast, and the misery of society's lowest class remained unaltered.

Daniel Malthus was so impressed with his son's arguments that he urged him to develop them into a small book. Robert Malthus' first essay on population, written in response to his father's urging, was only 50,000 words in length. It was was published anonymously in 1798, and its full title was An Essay on the Principle of Population, as it affects the future improvement of society, with remarks on the speculations of Mr. Godwin, M. Condorcet, and other writers. Robert Malthus' Essay explored the consequences of his basic thesis: that "the power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man".

3. Publication of the first essay in 1798

"That population cannot increase without the means of subsistence", Robert Malthus wrote, "is a proposition so evident that it needs no illustration. That population does invariably increase, where there are means of subsistence, the history of every people who have ever existed will abundantly prove. And that the superior power cannot be checked without producing misery and vice, the ample portion of these two bitter ingredients in the cup of human life, and the continuance of the physical causes that seem to have produced them, bear too convincing a testimony."

In order to illustrate the power of human populations to grow quickly to enormous numbers if left completely unchecked, Malthus turned to statistics

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